Week by week, month by month, state by state, the LGBT community’s fight for marriage equality continues to make slow but steady progress, offset by some setbacks. Most recently, marriage equality bills have been approved in Washington state and Maryland, but vetoed in New Jersey. The passage of a marriage bill in Maryland makes it the first southern state to recognize and permit same-sex marriage. The Maryland and Washington laws do not go into effect immediately, and in both states there is a real possibility that anti-gay bigots will put referendums or initiatives on the ballot to stymie efforts to extend this vital civil right.
As of February 2012, same-sex marriage is legal in eight states—New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Iowa, Washington, Maryland,—and the District of Columbia. Civil unions and domestic partnerships are recognized in Maine, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, Illinois, Wisconsin, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon, California and Hawaii. If Maine’s referendum to recognize full equality passes, marriage equality will be legal in all of New England.
On the other hand, in 39 states, including eight that recognize civil unions or partnerships, there are either statutory or constitutional bans on marriage equality. California’s much-hated Proposition 8 was overturned by a federal appeals court, but opponents are hoping for a successful appeal to a U.S. Supreme Court dominated by conservatives. If an anti-equality referendum in North Carolina is successful, every state of the former Confederacy will have a constitutional ban on marriage equality. New Mexico has no legislation either recognizing or prohibiting marriage, unions or partnerships, choosing to remain neutral on the issue.
But in the words of the late Howard Zinn, “You can’t be neutral on a moving train.”
Even if that train is moving at a snail’s pace. Bourgeois liberals may be satisfied with a states’ rights, one-step-forward-three-steps-back approach to achieving equality for the LGBT community, but for the millions of couples and their allies seeking the same rights, the same benefits and the same respect that straight couples take for granted, this is nothing less than an everyday nightmare. And this everyday nightmare has been brought to you by the federal government, which prohibits any federal recognition or protections for same-sex couples, and moreover, forbids any federal institution or agency from even acknowledging them.
While the lack of federal recognition affects LGBT families in numerous ways, one particularly prominent impact is in the area of immigration. Numerous cases of citizen/non-citizen same-sex couples facing deportation highlight the devastating impact of the federal government’s discriminatory posture.
It should come as no surprise that a government that wages imperialist warfare throughout the world in the name of “freedom, democracy” and even “human rights” takes a human rights issue like marriage equality and leaves it to the mercy of the states. The capitalist class relies on divisive ideas like homophobia and states’ rights as effective tools against working-class unity.
Throughout U.S. history, the doctrine of “states’ rights” has been used to justify slavery, racist Jim Crow laws, the death penalty, anti-worker legislation, attacks on reproductive rights and bans on interracial marriages. The freedom to marry is not a states’ right but a human right, and leaving the question to be answered by separate legal codes in all 50 states is an intentional tactic to slow down progress and empower bigoted, homophobic politicians to demonize and vilify the LGBT community. Creating irrational fears and espousing hatred towards the LGBT community helps to keep the working class distracted from their real enemies: the capitalist class and their cronies in government, the military-industrial complex and the biggest banks and corporations.
Socialists more than anyone else understand that an injustice to one is an injustice to all. Taking this collective spirit to heart, we stand in solidarity with the LGBT community and its continued struggle for marriage equality. We hereby demand full federal marriage equality for all couples, and that the freedom to marry be enshrined as a constitutional right. Bringing revolutionary change to the United States, the very core of the capitalist world, requires a powerful sense of working-class unity. Workers united against capitalist oppression will always be more powerful than the divisive dogmas of states’ rights and bigotry. Let us be loud and clear: Full federal marriage equality NOW!
